Buttons and Seams

I'm participating in Lori's Tuesday Project Party.

Click her link above to see what it's all about.

Get inspired!  Get working!

The project I'm sharing with y'all today is still in progress--that is, if I consider it one project.  Here's my report:

I'm sure you're wondering what in the world that building is, and why it is in this post.  It is where I started this project.  Its location:  Joliet Junior College, where Jacob and Danny are taking classes for degree/transfer.

We worked out a car schedule prior to the start of school, and since Danny has classes in two different locations, I accompany him on Monday and Wednesday afternoons to the Romeoville campus, and on Wednesday morning to the Joliet campus.  Jacob, who has classes on Tuesdays/Thursdays, takes Danny the rest of the days, either to Joliet or to Romeoville.  The reason--Danny has his driver's permit and can't drive alone.  Jacob was willing to take him everywhere, but also has classes to complete.  And Danny can't drive with Jacob in the car, since Jacob is not quite 21.  So on three different days, at three different times, I accompany Danny.

So there you go--a crazy car schedule until Danny gets his license.  But that's not my project (it should've been!)...

Back to Joliet Junior College, in the new A Building (in the photo above), in the cafeteria/lounge area, which is where I ended up last Wednesday morning with this:

Yep--another blouse which this non-seamstress thought she could make fit.  The problem--the sleeves are too tight on my arms.  The solution--widen the sleeve.

The original sleeve, buttoned:

I removed the button and widened the armhole opening by sewing the edge of the buttonhole to the edge of the other side.  Then, I sewed the button over the top of it to hide my amateur stitching.

The after:

Another blouse needed to be taken in at the sides, since it fit in my shoulders but "swam" on my waist.  I do have a shape, even if it is almost straight on the sides!

The before:

A lovely Christopher & Banks blouse, whose buttons don't gap!!  Found at Goodwill for about $4.00.

I marked the desired edge (I had already pinned it where I wanted it):

Then I hand-sewed along the line with a loopy through-one-side-and-out-the-other kind of stitch (I'm sure there's a name for it...):

A few days later, at the Romeoville campus, I finished taking in this blouse:

Also, Fernando had a doctor's appointment last week, and since I had to accompany him (his pupils were dilated and examined), I brought more blouses and completed a pretty white one.  I have two summer blouses left, which I am working on this week.  They'll be done just in time for the end of summer, lol.  Nothing like waiting until the last minute.  But they're getting done, which makes me happy.


Back to life,
Christine

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Nice and Neat -- Computer Cabinet

I'm participating in Lori's Tuesday Project Party.

Click her link above to see what it's all about.

Get inspired!  Get working!

The other day, I ran out to Office Max with my rewards certificate of almost $47.  That was cool in and of itself, but it gets better!  It was Teacher Appreciation at Office Max that Sunday and Monday, and I picked up a free tote bag with some goodies in it.  Oh, it gets better!  Everything I could fit into the bag was 20% off.

I know several of the employees at Office Max, since that's where we get our church bulletin printed each week.  Bernardo and Rick greeted me as I wandered the store with tote bag in hand. I love chatting with these young men; they're the same ages as my sons, so I feel kind of like a mom to them.  I think they like the attention. :)

Anyway, my bill at the checkout came to over $60, but with the discounts and coupons, my final payment was $4.54. Here's everything I got, including the freebies:

The big white box in the picture above contains a folder divider and two paper trays that all hook together, and I chose it so I could organize all my business files--client billing statements, tax paperwork, bank statements, etc.   I also have mailing envelopes, DVDs for client images, and DVD cases.  Everything was separated into a little group here, and a little group there.  I needed it to be all together so I could feel organized, and find things quickly when I needed them.

When I took a look at our computer desk, however, I cringed.

The desk top always gets cluttered, and then cleaned off.  I wasn't as concerned about that as I was with all the other stuff cluttering every shelf, nook, and cranny.  It was time for another project.

I decided to do what Lori does--I took everything off the desk top and all the shelves, and piled it all on the floor.  I left the bookcase alone; that's a project for another day, perhaps.

While I cleaned the silk foliage outside on the back patio, Danny dusted the whole top of the desk unit.  (Of course, I came in to take a picture of him working.)

Then, item by item, piece by piece, I began re-organizing, de-cluttering, and finding new homes for everything.  Some items found a home in other rooms in the house, since they really didn't belong at the computer desk:  photos and negatives, cards, and other items.

I put to use two cloth-lined dark baskets (on the top shelf below) that had just been sitting unused.  Fernando has a lot of...stuff, and I was able to fill one basket with various CDs and DVDs that belong to him.  I filled the second basket with general computer CDs and DVDs.  I re-labeled the six plastic pencil cases (top shelf, left-hand side in the below image)--pens, pencils, colored pencils, permanent markers, dry erase, rubber bands/erasers.  I love labels.  But, you knew that already.  :)

I bit the bullet and took some extra time to do all the filing lying on top of books on the bookshelf.  Once the computer cabinet doors are closed, the area looks nice and neat, below:

Since this project, I've weeded out a number of books from the bookshelf and added them to the pile of stuff to be sold.  If you want to browse the over 100 items I have listed, I created a nifty gallery here.  Shipping is extra.  :)

Yay for neat!  Yay for organized!  Yay for simple!


Back to life,
Christine

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I'm Hooked!

I'm participating in Lori's Tuesday Project Party.

Click her link above to see what it's all about.

Get inspired!  Get working!

Simplify!!

~~ This post contains tasteful "married people kissing" images.  Just so you know. ~~

I'm out of the basement this week.  It was a nice and cool working environment down there, though, and now I have some very nice, mostly clean spaces.  Typically, however, I spend most of my days somewhere on the first floor, mostly in the kitchen.  My kitchen work involves a trip or two ten feet down the hallway into my pantry/laundry/mud room.  I don't really know what to call this room, which is the first space we enter when we come inside from the garage.  We take off hats and coats there, hang wet towels from swimming (though there are not enough hooks), and do the laundry.  There's this closet along one wall that we "turned" into a pantry for lack of space in the kitchen:  Fernando put two inexpensive metal shelving units inside what we think was meant as a coat closet, and it became my pantry from our first week here until now, 13 years later.  Those metal shelves are still there, as are the original stick-on vinyl tile squares and the now-rusting door to the back yard.

Several years ago, I had bought some pretty black metal hooks on which we could hang winter coats, or summer swim items.  The hooks eventually made their way to a cabinet, until I fished them out recently and remarked to Fernando that it would be nice to get them put up.  He agreed, and set a date for completing the project with me.  But, more important things crowded into our "date," and the project was pushed aside.  Don't worry, this time it was for just a few weeks.

Determined to bless his honey with this act of service (which causes me to melt in a puddle), Fernando got out his cordless drill--thoughtfully charged by Thomas the day before--some screws and wall anchors, a level, a stud finder, and a pencil.  He removed two old rows of hooks on two different walls, and we worked together to mark spots for my new hooks, and to make sure they were level and evenly spaced.  Then Fernando worked and I assisted when he needed me to re-measure or something.  Mostly, though, I took pictures.

Screwing in the first hook!

Making sure it's level

Adding the second row of hooks

Removing the second of the old hooks

WARNING--sorry if you're offended by kissing pictures.  Fernando needed a thank-you kiss midway through in order to be able to finish the project.  It worked, too--read on...

Okay, now back to work:

I was so excited to have "too many" hooks rather than "not enough," and even though everything is messy from the work, I happily organized the guys' swim trunks and towels on too many hooks!

There were a few hooks left over, so Fernando put them in special, just for me.

Two hooks for two hats!

The below shows the second set of new hooks, next to the door that leads to the back yard.  To give you an idea of the (lack of) space, my back is against the wall opposite the garage.

And all that work earned my honey another kiss in the PLuM (Pantry/Laundry/Mud) room.

Back to life,
Christine

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Project Basement -- The Computer Area (Part II)

I'm participating in Lori's Tuesday Project Party.

Click her link above to see what it's all about.

Get inspired!  Get working!

Simplify!!

I've been back in the basement again.  This is a good thing.  It's really cool down there, which is nice because we've raised our a/c thermostat to 80 degrees.  The 73 or 74 degrees in the basement makes it a nice place to comfortably work up a sweat.

Below shows the next space I've been working on.

This space sits below our front living room.  The stairs are to the right, and to the right of the stairs is the food storage room I showed you last week.  This particular space isn't really that bad.  The guys had cleared some stuff out to make room for a metal two-shelf unit (which you can't see in front of the empty blue storage bins).  Those empty bins had contained clothing we just donated to Goodwill.  We keep a little freezer down here for extra freezer storage.  See the chalkboard leaning on the left-hand wall?  It is a monster--another "rescue" from Fernando's work.  Heavy is not an accurate word to describe its heft.

There is not much difference in the below image, except some things moved around, and another two-shelf unit we placed to the right of the freezer.

The guys' good buddy Bryan was over this day, and when he went home to take care of his dog, I got my guys to lug the chalkboard out of the basement, up the stairs, out the front door, and into the garage.  Pictures were taken, and it awaits a buyer.  No, we won't ship it--you can see below that it took four strong young men working together to get it into the garage!

I put our winter coats and jackets into some of the empty storage bins, and picked up other items and got them "grouped" into like things.  Here is another image during the pick-up process:

And below is my "after" shot, still with some things to pick up and sort through and put away.

Danny moved the computer toward the front left corner of our computer area

Oh, yeah, then Bryan came back to play.  So the guys did this for the rest of the afternoon:

And I did this:

Homemade flour tortillas (recipe to come soon...)

After our yummy taco dinner, the guys cleaned up then played.  And I labeled boxes!  Yes, it's one of my favorite things to do; just ask my guys.  I was fairly dancing as I cut out my pretty labels and taped them to my newly organized boxes.

Christmas boxes stacked on the left; winter coats/jackets/afghans stacked on the right

The red box with stuff hanging out of it is Fernando's hunting box.  I daren't touch his stuff, so at least it's contained in one box against the wall.

The "finished" area

"Finished" meaning I'm done with it for a while.  Danny set up the end table with the chess set on it.  There are still a few things left to be done--as I look at the photo I see three-ring binders on the bookcase, and an empty metal shelf to be filled with something else needing organizing.  But that will come another day.

See the computer desk and chair toward the back left?  Danny mentioned that it was too bad we didn't have one, and I offhandedly remarked, "Check Craigslist or Naperville Yard Sales..."  Five minutes later he found a listing for this desk, and the seller was located within ten minutes of our home.  We picked it up a few days later; it is simple and solid, and cost 15 DOLLARS.  And the wheeled office chair was given to us by one of Fernando's co-workers.  Woo-hoo for little money spent!


Yay for labels and desks and chairs!  Yay for de-cluttering and organizing!  Yay for SIMPLE!!


Back to life,
Christine

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Project Basement -- The Big One (Part I)

I'm participating in Lori's Tuesday Project Party.

Click her link above to see what it's all about.

Get inspired!  Get working!

Simplify!!

I've spent a lot of time in my basement at various points over recent years.  I've organized our food storage area, and organized our homeschool supplies.  The project I'm sharing today has been, oh, just a little bigger.  Take a look.

Yeah.  Not fun.  With five guys and little ol' me in the house, things tend to just "get put" instead of getting put away.  A place for everything... is my desire, but it tends to slip away when there are so many other things to do.

In the above photo, the cabinets along the left side of the above image are our homeschool supplies (foreground left) and our food storage area (background left).  However, as you can see, our food storage has expanded.  That table-looking thing toward the back is just that--a train table, to be more precise.  It has sat for several years, half-finished with an HO-scale model train track layout.  The gray wall comprises temporary cubicle walls you would find in an office building.  Fernando "rescued" the walls from his employer's dumpster, and they hide our furnace and "guts" of the house.  Fernando also has cabinets on the right of the image just beyond what you can see.  I have canning jars, bags and bags of bulk grains/etc., clothing, some toys...  Enough said.  The rest of the basement is more easily navigable, so this little 11x12 space is the focus of this major summer project.

I started with two large boxes of plastic food storage containers:  time to sort through those, with a pile to be sold, a pile to keep, and a pile for Goodwill/giveaway.  I cleaned off the small metal shelves (with the two canning pots on top--one went because I had three!!), and I organized the plastic food storage "keepers" on the bottom shelf.  Then I placed my empty canning jars in Starkist tuna boxes (love those boxes from Costco!) on the next two shelves.  One canning pot and our school microscope found locations on the top shelf, completing the space.

Buckets of bulk foods were moved in front of the de-cluttered/cleaned/organized shelves to make room to tackle the rest of the room, below (my "kind-of after" photo):

The photo above looks better than the "in-progress" photos you will see below--once everything gets pulled out, it is an even bigger mess.  Below is the progression of cleaning that we tackled.  We had to deal with clothing, trains, toys, metal two-shelf units, plastic storage boxes, and miscellaneous STUFF.

The guys tipped the train table on its side and wedged it between ceiling joists.  This is a temporary solution, as we hope to find a home for it, in someone else's home, of course!  Anyone love model trains?

The "sort-of-final" after photo for this portion of the work:

The guys also spent part of the previous weekend cleaning out the garage, and the result of these two major projects was a lot of stuff at the curb.  I'm happy to report that several items--a door and a window included--were picked up by scrap metal collectors.  The blue bins were overflowing with recycling, and there were 6-7 bags of garbage.  We did't feel too bad about the amount of garbage, since our family of six normally has just one small kitchen bag of garbage at the curb each week.

I am also working on cataloging every item pertaining to model trains, since we have a potential buyer and he wants to see EACH PIECE.  That's a "camera and staging" project I'm not looking forward to, but it has to be done.  Also, I have four large boxes of stuff to document with a typewritten chart and photos before taking them all over to Goodwill (across the street, fortunately!).  Then, some time soon, we'll be tackling the rest of the basement.

De-cluttering -- cleaning -- organizing -- simplifying.  I'm daunted by the work, but I feel the mental load of STUFF being slowly lifted.


Back to life,
Christine

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